Devon here!
Last week, I was given the opportunity to cover for Desiree at the Ant-Man and the Wasp press junket. To start this off, if you haven’t been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for this movie to come out, you need to be. Check back in on Friday, July 6th, which is opening day, for my review of this movie! In the meantime, I want to talk about my experience at this press junket, which easily made one of the most exciting junkets I’ve been to so far.
First when we arrived at the beautiful Langham Hotel in Pasadena. The very first thing I noticed was it was called “The Langham,” and Paul Rudd plays a character Scott Lang in the movie… Get it? Just me? Ha… Anyways. This hotel was absolutely gorgeous, with photo opportunities around every corner, even before we got to the junket area!
Once we did arrive, our first photo opportunity was this giant mug with sugar cubes. I was so excited I got to feel teeny-tiny, even if just for a couple minutes. There was originally also a giant spoon, but that was moved elsewhere. Maybe you’ll recognize it later in this post…
After getting to eat some delicious food and hang out for a bit, we got to go into the room where the conference itself would take place. While waiting for everything to begin, we got to take photos with this giant Pez candy! I couldn’t even reach the top of it, so I was really reminded that being tiny might begin to be a difficult adjustment after a while.
And then the conference began! Everybody who joined us included:
· Paul Rudd (“Scott Lang / Ant-Man”)
· Evangeline Lilly (“Hope van Dyne / The Wasp”)
· Michael Douglas (“Dr Hank Pym”)
· Laurence Fishburne (“Dr Bill Foster”)
· Hannah John-Kamen (“Ghost”)
· Director Peyton Reed
· Producer Kevin Feige
The first question asked by a member of the press was how did both Paul Rudd and Peyton Reed go about creating this movie as both a sequel to the first Ant-Man, but also to Captain America: Civil War. If you’ve seen Civil War, then you’ll know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, you’re missing out but there are no spoilers here. In Civil War, Scott Lang gets himself involved in everything going on in the events of the movie, and of course, there are consequences. Following those events, Scott Lang was placed on house arrest and that’s where this movie begins, and Peyton explained that setting it up that way created a very organic jumping off point, which it really did. Paul followed up, explaining that Scott Lang is already an established character in the MCU, so they had more leeway to make decisions as far as the direction his character would take in this film.
One of the next questions was directed towards Hannah John-Kamen, who plays Ghost, one of the threats in this movie. The press wanted to know if Ghost sees herself as the villain, which Hannah responded with a quick no, choosing the word “threat” instead. She elaborated, “When you play a villain, you have to play it like you’re the good guy and everyone else is bad.”
A little bit of conversation later, Evangeline Lilly also decided to chime in, telling us a bit of a story;
“I always… I have a seven-year-old son and he loves violent movies. And he likes to taunt me by telling me, “Mom, I love violence,” because he knows I hate it. And he always, when he talks about good guys and bad guys in movies, I always feel a responsibility to clarify for him: ‘Honey you know that there really is no such thing as a bad guy. Right? They’re only just good guys, who have made so many bad choices, they’ve forgotten how to make good choices. And a true hero’s job is to remind them of their goodness. Not to annihilate them, to kill them. You know, it’s to help them redeem themselves.’ And I think that’s applicable to life. Superhero stories are fun and they’re a totally different world, but what I think is cool and is that to have redeemable villains, you’re teaching children that if you encounter somebody that might have a different opinion than you, that doesn’t mean they’re a villain. If they have a different objective than you, it doesn’t mean you should attack them. Maybe you want to try to understand them first.”
Understandably so, there was a huge round of applause following that statement. It really put a lot of things into perspective which is why I feel like it’s such an important point.
See that giant spoon?
There was so much more we all talked about, and I wish I could write about every single part of the conversation, but that would be so much to elaborate on. Overall, this was such an incredible junket to be a part of and I’m so happy I had this opportunity. Ant-Man and the Wasp comes out in theaters everywhere on Friday, July 6th! Check out the trailer below if you haven’t seen it yet!
